- SEO Conference Bingo Card – Get yours now
- #SMWF Day 2 – What I’m gonna do
- #SMWF – Panel: Managing your company’s online reputation via social media
- Panel: Social media engagement measurement and metrics #smwf
- #SMWF – Cultivating Visibility & Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything
SEO-Ward
Jim Seward – SEO Myth Buster
Big Business SEO with @tomcrithclow #searchlove
Published October 24, 2011 | 
Starting withe the first dilbert of the day
Think visionary with your projects – Big companies laugh at small ideas. They’re just not interested in small investment/small ideas. So think big and you’ll likely get further.
Justify the budget with pilot projects.
Make sure you have something that shows the ROI before you go in, start with a smaller project and scale up. People in big companies like to win, They want the vision but you have to justify the vision and ROI Continue reading
Using dynamic keywords in Google Adwords landing pages to increase clickthrough, quality score and reduce CPC.
Published October 10, 2011 |
Now, before I start this post, let me make it perfectly clear. I am not a PPC expert, I am through and through an Organic SEO but occasionally I end up setting up the odd PPC campaign or two and I think this is probably one of the coolest things you can do with adwords so I thought I’d share.
It’s possible to create dynamic Google adverts containing your keywords, this is fairly common knowledge but let’s go over it just so we all know we’re on the same page.
The syntax for Google AdWords Dynamic Keyword Insertion is {keyword: }
You can also use the following capitalisation on the work ‘keyword’ to get different effects:
- keyword – no capitalisation
- Keyword – First word is capitalised
- KeyWord – Every Word Is Capitalised
- KEYword – EVERY letter in first word is capitalised
- KEYWord – LIKE Above But With Each Word Capitalised
- KEYWORD – EVERY LETTER IS CAPITALISED
Make sure you put a generic “catch all” phrase after the : so make sure it shows something if your keyword string is too long for example {keyword:Jim Is Awesome}.
Now, here’s the very clever part and what separates the PPC men from the boys or the PPC Women from the girls.
Posted in Crazy code snippets, Google, PPC, Search Engines | dynamic landing pages, pay-per-click, ppc | 
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Leave a commentHaving a #sitemap and submitting it to #Google improves your #rankings
Published October 7, 2011 |
I received a tweet this morning from @neha_pandkar from a link to a blog telling me how to submit a sitemap to Google and learn about SEO, I’ve never heard of this person and looking at his twitter feed, he’s sent the same tweet to multiple people so I’m imagining it’s automated.
The blog in question has made it onto my list of world’s worst SEO blogs, a short article on how to log into Google webmaster tools (YAWN) and submit a sitemap surrounded by lots of advertising but it’s this wonderful opportunity to look at another in my myths and legends series. Google sitemaps come up a lot so does having a Google sitemap and submitting it to Google do anything to increase your rankings.
What a day at Alton Towers can teach you about #SEO
Published October 5, 2011 |
Every year on the first Tuesday of October is “Tuesday @ the Towers” a day where a number of my oldest friends and I take a day off and head to Alton Towers from round the country and meet up for a day of awesomeness. It’s a bit of a random day to go, I agree but it’s absolutely dead, there are no queues for anything and you can walk straight on any of the rides. The weather is usually good and you can really get a lot out of the day.
As I walked round the park yesterday and went on the rides, I started to draw parallels with Organic SEO that went beyond the obvious “Like rollercoasters, rankings go up and down.” Each ride had a different lesson to teach. Continue reading
Posted in Jim talks shite, Personal stuff, Search Engines, Social Media | Alton Towers, seo, Tuesday @The Towers | 2 Comments
2 CommentsMicrosites are great for your organic rankings
Published September 27, 2011 |
It seems to be desire of marketing people to have microsites for every conceivable part of a business, every single campaign. Of course it makes sense, you can tailor the microsite to exactly the niche you’re targeting, buy a new KID (keyword in domain), you can get your message across without any problems, have a great conversion funnel.
Awesome, you’ve made your microsite…Now what, well of course you market it, you link build, you exploit social trends and sites and if your site is truly incredible, you’ll get thousands of links, millions of likes and shares and your microsite will be a big success, what a great project.
Now, think about this carefully, what percentage of microsites do you think actually achieve that sort of penetration and how many do you think struggle? I would say the majority of microsites, unless they are truly spectacular will need paid traffic.
So the questions is, are microsites good for your SEO and your rankings in the SERPS? Continue reading
Your Organic #Google Rankings are influenced by how much you spend on #PPC
Published September 14, 2011 |
If I got paid every time someone asks me this question. Oh wait…I do, but let’s talk about it anyway. Here’s how it goes.
People think:
- Google wants people to spend more on PPC, and so depress people who spend in the organic rankings so they spend more
- Google like to reward their high paying PPC customers so give them an artificial boost in the organic rankings
Well, what do we think people, truth or myth?? Continue reading
Posted in Google, Search Engines, SEO Myths & Legends | pay-per-click, ppc, quality content, seo, seo myths | 1 Comment
1 CommentBuying paid links can harm your #rankings
Published September 12, 2011 |
Ah, the age old debate of whether to pay for links or not. It’s an interesting debate, according to Google, you shouldn’t pay for links in order to artificially manipulate the serps or your page’s PageRank. This produces the idea that you will be penalised if you do it and dropped out of Google, or some sort of penalty applied if you do this. So what do people think, is this a myth or is it truth. Can buying links harm your rankings? Continue reading
#SEO and search related songs and tunes
Published September 8, 2011 |
Just a quickie today to draw your attention to my youtube feed down below, check it out for some awesome (and sometimes cheesy) search related tunes.
I’ve gone out and about and found my favourite search related songs. Would be great to add to the list. Feel free to comment with your favourites and if they don’t suck, I’ll add them to the list. I’m hoping to create the definitive SEO related playlist.
Here’s the list so far:
- Hunting High & Low – Aha
- Still haven’t found what I’m looking for – U2
- Just Google – (a parody of Beat It by Micheal Jackson)
- Searchin’ - The Coasters & Del Shannon
- Crawling in the Dark – Hooberstank
- The River of Dreams – Billy Joel
- Following the Sun – Enigma
- When I needed you – Erasure
- Call Of The Search – Katie Melua
- Learn to Fly – The Foo Fighters
- The Seeker – The Who
Only stipulation is that they can’t be too obvious, or obviously searching or looking for love (and they come across a bit facebook search and stalkery, so no Hello by Lionel Richie or Looking for Linda please 
but all other suggestions welcome 
but all other suggestions welcome
Posted in Experiments, Jim talks shite, Personal stuff, Search Engines | music, search, seo, songs | Leave a comment
Leave a comment#Metatags are vital to your ranking
Published August 22, 2011 |
Anybody who’s been in the SEO industry for any period of time knows all about meta tags. Back in the early days, they were helpful for the search engines when the spiders and algorithms weren’t as advanced, to work out what a page was about. Search engines figured that if a site used a term in it’s description or keywords tag, then that was what the page was about. There’s no way that people would be dishonest and stuff keywords in there….was there???
And yes, that’s exactly what happened, so that’s why these days, it’s a big stinking myth, or should I say it’s outdated and the search engines have moved on. Obviously there are piles and piles of meta tags which will add value to a page beyond affecting your rankings so I’m not poo pooing meta tags completely. Continue reading
Posted in Bing, Google, Search Engines, SEO Myths & Legends, Yahoo | description tag, keywords tag, meta tags | 1 Comment
1 CommentSEOld Man Google – (Or Old Man River for the modern SEO)
Published August 12, 2011 |
Inspired by some news I got today and my follow up tweet, I got the song in my head and got a bit meloncholy…obviously not comparing the plight of SEOs to the plight of the slaves on the banks of the Mississippi here, but here it is:
SEOld Man Google (Or Old Man River for the modern SEO)
SEO’s work on the superhighway
SEO’s work while the clients pay
Makin those links from dawn till sunset
Gettin no rest ’til the rankin’ day
Don’t get up and don’t get down
Don’t ya make that client frown
Over the keyboard you bows your head
optimise that site until it’s time for bed
Let me go ‘way from the superhighway
Let me go ‘way from the .htaccess
Show me that site called the River Google
That’s the old site that I long to best
Ol’ Man Google, that Ol’ Man Google
He must know somepin’, but he don’t say nothin’
He just keeps rollin’, he keeps on rollin’ along
He don’t rank scrapers, or they’re near the bottom
And if he ranks em, they’re soon forgotten
And Ol’ Man Google, he just keeps rollin’ along
You and me, we sweat and strain
Minds all achin’ and wracked with pain
Panicked by the latest panda update
Ya gets a little drunk if you drops past eight
I gets weary but I loves the challenge
I’m tired of optimisin’, but won’t give up tryin
And Ol’ Man Google, he just keeps rollin’ along
Posted in Google, Jim talks shite, Personal stuff, Search Engines | Google, old man google, old man river | Leave a comment
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